the exhibition captions

Transcription

The Art of
the Guggenheim
Collections
FLORENCE
Palazzo Strozzi
19 MARCH
24 JULY
2016
Curated by
Luca Massimo Barbero
From Kandinsky to Pollock. The Art of the Guggenheim
Collections offers an unprecedented opportunity to see
assembled together works of art from the museums of
Solomon R. Guggenheim
and of his niece Peggy, and to explore their pivotal roles
in the history and development of 20th century art.
Built around their collections, the exhibition presents
masterpieces which helped to define the very concept
of modern art, while also documenting the life and times
of Solomon and Peggy and the story of the museums
they founded. Enthusiastic collectors passionate about
the art of their own time, the Guggenheims were eager
to acquaint the wider world with the work of the avantgarde. Peggy introduced modern European art to the new
world of American painters and
sculptors, and in this way contributed to the formation
of the first New York avant-garde, while American artists
such as Jackson Pollock were, in their turn, to have a
profound impact on European art.
This exhibition celebrates an earlier link between Peggy
Guggenheim and Florence. Palazzo Strozzi was the venue
which she chose in February 1949 (she had only recently
returned to Europe) to exhibit the collection that was later
to find its permanent home in Venice. Twenty-six works
that were on view then, in the newly-restored cellars of
the palace, La Strozzina, are included here.
The Art of the
Guggenheim
Collections
The Guggenheim family’s two great collectors are
introduced here by their museum projects in New
York. To the left, the interior of Art of This Century,
the museum gallery that Peggy Guggenheim
opened in 1942. With its innovative design by
Frederick Kiesler, this was a venue
that brought together European emigré artists
and thenew American avant-garde. To the right,
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed
by Frank Lloyd Wright and opened to the public in
1959. This swiftly became both a Manhattan and an
international architectural icon. The art on display
here encapsulates the origins of the two collections.
From 1929, with the help of artist and adviser Hilla
Rebay, Solomon focused on abstract art, devoid of
all reference to the real world. Peggy’s collection,
which she began to assemble while in Europe in the
late 1930s, demonstrates her “impartiality between
Surrealist and abstract art.”
4
Giorgio de Chirico
Volo 1888–Rome 1978
The Gentle Afternoon
(Le Doux après-midi)
1916
oil on canvas
65.3 x 58.3 cm
Venice, Peggy Guggenheim
Collection
Theo van Doesburg
Utrecht 1883–Davos 1931
Composition XI
(Kompositie XI)
1918
oil on canvas in artist’s frame
64.6 x 109 cm
(cm 73.2 x 117.8)
New York, Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum
Vasily Kandinsky
Moscow 1866
Neuilly-sur-Seine 1944
Upward (Empor)
October 1929
oil on cardboard
70 x 49 cm
Collection
5
Vasily Kandinsky
Moscow 1866
Dominant Curve
(Courbe dominante)
April 1936
oil on canvas
129.2 x 194.3 cm
Guggenheim Museum.
Founding Collection
Antoine Pevsner
Klimavitchy 1884
Paris 1962
Anchored Cross
(La Croix ancrée)
1933
marble, brass painted black,
and crystal
84.6 cm long diagonally
Collection
This painting, which
Kandinsky considered the
masterpiece of his Paris
period (1933–44), links the
Guggenheims as collectors.
Peggy Guggenheim acquired
it from her Kandinsky
exhibition at Guggenheim
Jeune gallery, London,
in 1938. It was exhibited
at Art of This Century in
1942 and later sold to the
Nierendorf Gallery, New
York (which Peggy was to
regret). It entered Solomon R.
Guggenheim’s collection after
Karl Nierendorf ’s sudden
death in 1947.
6
7
Naum Gabo
Bryansk 1890
Waterbury 1977
Translucent Variation
on Spheric Theme
1937 (reconstructed 1951)
perspex
56.8 x 44.8 x 44.8 cm
Guggenheim Museum.
Founding Collection
Paul Klee
Münchenbuchsee 1879
Muralto-Locarno 1940
Portrait of Mrs P. in the South
(Bildnis der Frau P. im Süden)
1924
watercolor and oil transfer
drawing on paper, mounted
on gouache-painted board
42.5 x 31 cm including mount
Collection
This work by Naum Gabo
(who left the Soviet Union
with his brother Antoine
Pevsner when their work
aroused the hostility of
the Communist regime)
embodies the aestheticizing,
abstract thought of his
Manifesto of Russian
Constructivism. The painting
by Theo van Doesburg,
founder with Mondrian of
the De Stijl movement in
1917, is the Dutch response to
that Manifesto. The purity of
its geometrical, abstracted
forms is exemplary of ‘nonobjective painting.’
8
9
Max Ernst
Brühl 1891–Paris 1976
The Kiss (Le Baiser)
1927
oil on canvas
129 x 161.2 cm
Collection
Abandoning the irony of his
Dada period, Max Ernst went
on to celebrate sexuality
in his Surrealist works. The
image’s dominant black
lines are determined by a
cord dropped freely onto
the canvas, reflecting the
importance the Surrealists
attributed to chance. Ernst
then subjected the result to
conscious manipulation. The
image was reproduced on
the cover of the catalogue
for the exhibition of Peggy
Guggenheim’s collection at
the Strozzina in 1949.
10
Alberto Giacometti
Borgonovo 1901
Coira 1966
Woman Walking
(Femme qui marche)
1936 (cast 1969)
bronze
144.6 cm high
Collection
The forward foot, implying
confrontation with death, was
inspired by ancient Egyptian
sculpture, while the flattened
torso and slender limbs
recall the stylized art of the
Cyclades and Archaic Greek
kouroi. Classical statuary was
not Giacometti’s only source.
The headless figure emulates
Rodin’s Walking Man (1900–
07), which was shown at the
Strozzina in 1949, the same
year (by Peggy
Guggenheim’s own account)
that Walking Woman was
cast in bronze.
11
Constantin Brancusi
Hobitza 1876–Paris 1957
Bird in Space
(L’Oiseau dans l’espace)
1932–40
polished brass
151.7 cm high, including base
Collection
Brancusi developed the
theme of the bird from the
Maiastra (mythical bird of
Romanian folklore), via the
Golden Bird, to the Bird in
Space, in which aerodynamic
form conveys the notion of
flight rather than the image
of the bird itself. Brancusi
customarily polished the
brass surface to the point
that it appeared to dissolve
in its own luminosity. Peggy
acquired Bird in Space from
Brancusi in 1940, even as Nazi
troops were closing in on
Paris.
12
Germaine Richier
Grans 1902
Montpellier 1959
Forest Man, Large version
(L’Homme-forêt, grand)
1945–6
dark patinated bronze
(cast 2007)
94 x 45 x 45 cm
Foundation. Gift of the
Germaine Richier Family
Morris Hirshfield
Poland 1872
New York 1945
Two Women in Front
of a Mirror
1943
oil on canvas
133 x 152 cm
Collection
Paul Delvaux
Antheit 1897
Furnes 1994
The Break of Day (L’Aurore)
July 1937
oil on canvas
120 x 150.5 cm
Collection
13
Europe–America.
Surrealism
and the Birth
of the New
Avant-Gardes
When World War II broke out, many European
Surrealists emigrated to the States where, due in
no small measure to Peggy Guggenheim, they were
to influence young artists whowent on to develop
an American avant-garde in the post-war era. The
exhibits in this room illustrate Peggy’s passion for
Surrealism and the work of her good friend and
adviser Marcel Duchamp. The Surrealists had much
in common but never a single style. Peggy, who
loved them for their diversity, collected their work
with generous enthusiasm.
The works of Gorky, Gottlieb, Baziotes and Still (the
latter two were given their first solo exhibitions
at Art of This Century) reveal the contamination
of avant-garde experiences from both continents
that was to lead to Abstract Expressionism, the
dominant manifestation of the rise of American
nonfigurative painting in the late 1940s and 50s.
14
André Masson
Balagny-sur-Oise 1896
Paris 1987
Armour (L’Armure)
January–April 1925
oil on canvas
80.6 x 54 cm
Collection
Masson brought the visual
syntax of analytical Cubism
to this painting, with its
limited palette of browns
and grays, spatial ambiguity
and broken brushwork. Yet
the artist endowed the nude
with a Surrealist, explicitly
erotic charge (evident in the
pomegranate) and focused
on the woman’s torso,
eliminating her arms and
brutally removing her head.
This was exhibited in the first
Surrealist exhibition, at the
Galerie Pierre, Paris, in 1925.
15
16
Jean Arp
Strasbourg 1886
Basel 1966
Crown of Buds I
(Couronne de bourgeons I)
1936
limestone
49.1 x 37.5 cm
Collection
Pablo Picasso
Malaga 1881–Mougins 1973
Half-length Portrait of a Man
in a Striped Jersey (Buste
d’homme en tricot rayé)
14 September 1939
gouache on paper
63.1 x 45.6 cm
Collection
In the early 1930s Arp was
producing works which,
while abstract, still sought
to express natural processes
and were spawned by the
notion that everything in
nature can be considered to
be a variation on a handful
of basic forms. The work has
a vaguely organic structure
reminiscent of the human
body, which may be why it
was mistakenly titled Crown
of Breasts (Corona di seni) in
the 1948 Venice Biennale and
again at the Strozzina in 1949.
After Picasso moved to
Royan on France’s Atlantic
coast when war broke out,
he produced ten versions of
his Bust of a Man in a Striped
Shirt inspired by images
from memory, possibly of a
fisherman seen in the port
wearing a sailor’s shirt. It has
also been suggested that this
is a self-portrait. Painted in
shades of gray, the bust allays
the tortured tension of his
output in that year, with the
facial distortion that was a
hallmark of his style.
17
Pablo Picasso
Malaga 1881
Mougins 1973
The Dream and Lie of Franco
(Sueño y mentira de Franco)
1937
aquatint, two parts
each 38.2 x 54.5 cm
Collection
Roberto Sebastián
Matta
Santiago de Chile 1911
Civitavecchia 2002
Untitled
1939
graphite and chalk on paper
32.3 x 50 cm
Foundation. Gift, Lynven Inc.,
2013
18
Roberto Sebastián
Matta
Santiago de Chile 1911
Civitavecchia 2002
The Dryads
1941
watercolor, pencil and crayon
on paper
58.2 x 73.4 cm
Collection
In its sequential scenes,
starting upper left, the
drawing shows Matta’s
interest in cinema. The
pseudo-mythological content
is handled with Surrealist
distortion: three dryads,
wood nymphs in Greek
mythology, couple with
three centaurs to create
new winged creatures. The
creature into which a dryad
and a centaur have been
transformed tries to fly away,
but its wings are severed
and it flees on foot before a
threatening tank.
19
Yves Tanguy
Paris 1900
Woodbury 1955
The Sun in Its Jewel Case
(Le Soleil dans son écrin)
1937
oil on canvas
115.4 x 88.1 cm
Collection
Turning to painting in 1923,
after being “thunderstruck”
by a De Chirico painting,
Tanguy fused earth and sky in
his apocalyptic settings, in a
vision devoid of horizon. His
forms, un nameable
yet meticulous, draw their
corporeal substance from the
shadows cast by an invisible
sun. Peggy staged an
exhibition of Tanguy’s work
in her Guggenheim Jeune
gallery in London in July 1938
and later helped him move to
the United States.
20
Max Ernst
Brühl 1891–Paris 1976
‘’The Antipope”
c. 1941
oil on cardboard,
mounted on board
32.5 x 26.5 cm
Collection
Fleeing Europe with Peggy
Guggenheim’s assistance,
Ernst settled in New York
in 1941 and the couple were
soon wed. In her memoirs,
Peggy interprets the warrior
with a horse’s head as Ernst
and recognized her own
face as a child in the figure
approaching him. The central
figure seen from behind is
Peggy’s daughter Pegeen.
The small painting was
developed into a large canvas
the same year.
21
Leonora Carrington
Lancaster 1917–Mexico City 2011
Oink (They Shall Behold
Thine Eyes)
1959
oil on canvas
40 x 90.9 cm
Collection
Leonor Fini
Buenos Aires 1907
Paris 1996
The Shepherdess
of the Sphinxes
1941
oil on canvas
46.2 x 38.2 cm
Collection
22
Rita Kernn-Larsen
Hillerød 1904
Copenhagen 1998
Self-Portrait (Know Thyself)
1937
oil on canvas
40 x 45 cm
Foundation. Purchased with
funds contributed by Penny
Borda, Lewis and Laura
Kruger, and the Guggenheim
Circle, 2013
23
Victor Brauner
Piatra Neamt 1903
Paris 1966
The Surrealist (Le Surréaliste)
January 1947
oil on canvas
60 x 45 cm
Collection
Brauner – who was
introduced by his friend
Yves Tanguy to the Surrealist
group c. 1933 – found his
inspiration in the tarot cards
for this portrait of the artist
as a young man: in the
Marseille tarot, the Juggler
symbolizes the Surrealist
poet’s creativity; in the White
tarot, the Magician wears
the sign of infinity (symbol
of life) on his hat. Life and
the objects are under the
Juggler’s control, just as
creativity is at the Surrealist
poet’s disposal.
24
Marcel Duchamp
Blainville 1887
Box in a Valise
(Boîte en-valise)
1941
leather valise containing
miniature replicas and color
reproductions of works
by Duchamp, and one
photograph with graphite,
watercolor, and ink additions
40.7 x 37.2 x 10.1 cm
Collection
The first of the de luxe
edition of Louis Vuitton
valises containing sixty-one
reproductions of Duchamp’s
art includes a dedication to
Peggy Guggenheim, who
helped to finance the project,
a miniature of Fountain
(an upturned urinal), and
the famous image of the
hirsute Mona Lisa inscribed
L.H.O.O.Q. If one pronounces
these letters in French, they
form the phrase “Elle
a chaud au cul”, which
Duchamp translated as:
“There is fire down below”.
25
26
William Baziotes
Pittsburgh 1912–1963
The Parachutists
1944
duco enamel on canvas
76.2 x 101.6 cm
The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation. Gift, Ethel
Baziotes
Clyfford Still
Grandin 1904
Baltimore 1980
Jamais
May 1944
oil on canvas
165.2 x 82 cm
Collection
The black lines and the
primary colors here remind
us that Baziotes once worked
in a stained glass factory,
while the structured surface
reveals the influence of
Cubism. The allusive title is
hard to explain, although
parachute shapes conjure
up images of the Allied war
effort during World War II.
Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of
This Century gallery hosted
Baziotes’ first solo exhibition,
including this painting.
An early work by this
Abstract Expressionist, it
was shown at Still’s first oneman exhibition organized by
Peggy Guggenheim at her
Art of This Century gallery in
1946. The title – one of the
few he ever assigned, and
maintained – suggests a
figure crying out in despair as
the sun goes down, hinting at
the artist’s experience in the
1930s when the Northwest
was hit by drought and by
the Great Depression.
27
Adolph Gottlieb
New York 1903–1974
Floating
1945
oil, gouache and casein
on canvas
81 x 63.5 cm
Foundation. Anonymous gift
Arshile Gorky
Vosdanik Adoian;
Khorkom Vari 1904
Sherman 1948
Untitled
Summer 1944
oil on canvas
167 x 178.2 cm
Collection
The white background,
empty above to suggest
the sky while the “earth”
pullulates with plant life,
derives from landscape. The
notion of gravity is rendered
by dripping paint diluted
in turpentine, a method
suggested by Matta. The
techniques and themes of
Surrealism influenced the
development of Gorky’s
style. In emphasising the
expressive potential of line,
form and color, he was
pointing the way to Abstract
Expressionism.
28
29
Jackson
Pollock
Jackson Pollock, Action Painting’s most emblematic
figure, became in the space of a few years one of
the United States’ most celebrated artists of his
generation – almost a living legend following an
article in Life magazine in 1949 – thanks primarily to
Peggy Guggenheim’s unflagging support. Pollock,
who had worked as a carpenter in Solomon R.
Guggenheim’s museum, was given a contract by
Peggy in 1943 that allowed him to focus solely on
his painting. The works assembled here date from
1942 to 1951, from early paintings that betray the
influence of Picasso and Surrealism (The Moon
Woman, 1942, and Two, 1943–45) to paintings using
the poured technique which, as its name indicates,
consists in pouring paint onto a horizontal canvas.
In his mature phase
Pollock sought inspiration in the choreographic
gestures reminiscent of Native American magic
rituals (Enchanted Forest, 1947, Untitled [Green
Silver], c. 1949, Number 18, 1950). His painting here
takes the form of an animated tangle of colored
lines and patches stretching almost beyond the
edge of the canvas with no apparent figurative
intent. His work was to revolutionize post-war
art, spreading like wildfire thanks to Peggy, who
promoted it with exhibitions in Europe (1948, 1949,
and 1950) and with donations to museums, some of
which are exhibited here.
30
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Untitled CR 565
c. 1940
pencil and colored pencil
on paper
25 x 20 cm
Munich, Private collection,
Courtesy American
Contemporary Art Gallery
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Untitled M 46
1943
monotype, 14 x 21.6 cm
Courtesy American
31
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Untitled CR 688
c. 1943
pen, black ink and colored
pencil on paper
32 x 22 cm
Munich, Private Collection,
Courtesy American
32
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
The Moon Woman
1942
oil on canvas
175.2 x 109.3 cm
Collection
Pollock’s early work was
influenced by Miró and
Picasso, and embraced the
Surrealist concept of the
unconscious as a resource
for content. The Moon
Woman derives from Picasso,
depicting a standing deity,
seen as though in an X-ray,
with the curving red lines of
her shape springing from the
black line of her spine. Her
face is seen from the front
and the side, contrasting the
two aspects: the one serene
and outward-looking, the
other dark and introspective.
33
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Two
1943–5
oil on canvas
193 x 110 cm
Collection
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Untitled
1946
monotype
cm 21.6 x 14
Courtesy American
34
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Untitled
c. 1946
gouache and pastel on paper
58 x 80 cm
Collection
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
The Water Bull
1946
oil on canvas
76.5 x 213 cm
Amsterdam, Stedelijk
Museum. Gift, Peggy
Guggenheim
35
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Watery Paths
1947
oil on canvas
114 x 86 cm
Rome, GNAM-Galleria
Nazionale d’Arte Moderna
e Contemporanea. Gift,
Peggy Guggenheim, 1950
The device of pouring can
be found in small works
by Pollock as early as
1943. It originated in part
from Surrealist-inspired
experiments with the
chance application of paint
(automatism), and was
current among several other
artists in New York. The
process was not random:
“When I paint, I have an
overall idea of what I want
to achieve” (Pollock). Peggy
Guggenheim donated
Watery Paths to the Galleria
Nazionale d’Arte Moderna,
Rome, in 1950.
36
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Enchanted Forest
1947
oil on canvas
221.3 x 114.6 cm
Collection
Enchanted Forest is an
example of Jackson Pollock’s
mature compositions, made
by pouring, dripping and
flicking color onto a large
canvas with no supporting
frame. The construction is
dilated, leaving areas blank in
the grid of a line that moves
and expands. The palette is
limited to gold, black, red and
white. Pollock balances form
and color with the rhythm
of lines in constant, lyrical
movement.
37
38
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Untitled (Green Silver)
c. 1949
enamel and aluminum paint
on paper, mounted on canvas
57.8 x 78.1 cm
Guggenheim Museum. Gift
Sylvia and Joseph Slifka
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
CR 1094 (P30) [after Number
19, 1951]
1951
silk-screen (set of 6: 6 of 6),
ink on paper
73.7 x 58.4 cm
Switzerland, Private
collection
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
Number 18
1950
oil and enamel on Masonite
56 x 56.7 cm (63 x 63 cm)
Guggenheim Museum.
Gift Janet C. Hauck, in
loving memory of Alicia
Guggenheim and Fred Hauck
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
CR 1093 (P29),
[after Number 9, 1951]
1951
ink on paper
73.7 x 58.4 cm
collection
39
40
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
CR 1091 (P27)
1951
ink on paper
58.4 x 73.7 cm
collection
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
CR 1095 (P31)
1951
silk-screen,(set of 6: 4 of 6),
ink on paper
73.7 x 58.4 cm
collection
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
CR 1092 (P28)
[after Number 8 (Black
Flowing), 1951]
1951
silk-screen,(set of 6: 1 of 6),
ink on paper
58.4 x 73.7 cm
collection
Jackson Pollock
Cody 1912
East Hampton 1956
CR 1096 (P32)
1951
ink on paper
58.4 x 73.7 cm
collection
41
Abstract
Expressionism
Willem de Kooning was one of Abstract
Expressionism’s most representative figures. A
restless rebel of Dutch origin, he anticipated the
most important stylistic developments in modern
painting, discovering the strength of symbols and
creating compositions combining color, matter and
gesture. The movement coalesced around eighteen
artists who, in 1950 protested the selection of
artists for a contemporary American painting show
organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
thus earning themselves the name “the Irascible
18.” Works by some of them are shown here
alongside examples of Sam Francis’s Post-Painterly
Abstraction, of the work of Joan Mitchell and of
Hans Hofmann, who developed an independent
abstract vocabulary and who was to influence new
generations of artists through his dedication to
teaching.
42
Willem de Kooning
Rotterdam 1904
East Hampton 1997
Composition
1955
oil, enamel, and charcoal
on canvas
201 x 175.6 cm
Guggenheim Museum
The theme of the female
figure, so central to de
Kooning’s output, is bound
up with the artist’s gradual
abandonment of figuration
for an abstraction grounded
in a salient feature of his
art. His paintings betray
a distorting vision that
abstracts external reality with
an impetuous painterly style
bursting with energy and an
intense Expressionist palette.
43
Sam Francis
San Mateo 1923
Santa Monica 1994
Untitled
c. 1958
watercolor on paper,
mounted on canvas
76.2 x 56.5 cm
Foundation, Hannelore B.
and Rudolph B. Schulhof
Collection, bequest of
Hannelore B. Schulhof, 2012
Sam Francis
San Mateo 1923
Santa Monica 1994
Shining Back
1958
oil on canvas
202.6 x 135.4 cm
Guggenheim Museum
Through the intuitive and
animated style of Abstract
Expressionism, Sam Francis
achieved expressive
individualism by emphasising
the sensual qualities of
color and their interaction
with light and space. The
aesthetic of Oriental art, with
its simplified asymmetrical
forms and empty spaces,
mesmerized Francis
during a visit to Japan in
1957, prompting him to
move towards abstract
compositions of fluid forms.
44
45
46
Sam Francis
San Mateo 1923
Santa Monica 1994
Untitled
March 1964
acrylic on paper
103.7 x 69.5 cm
Collection
Hans Hofmann
Weissenburg 1880
New York 1966
Spring on Cape Cod
1961
oil on canvas
116.8 x 91.4 cm
Hans Hofmann
Weissenburg 1880
New York 1966
The Gate
1959–60
oil on canvas
190.5 x 123.2 cm
Guggenheim Museum
Joan Mitchell
Chicago 1925–Paris 1992
Composition
1962
oil on canvas
146.1 x 114.3 cm
Hofmann, a German who
emigrated to the United
States in 1932, was in touch
with emerging young talent
through his teaching at the
summer school in Cape Cod,
Massachusetts, where he was
to lecture for over twenty
years. He focused on color
and expressiveness, creating
dynamic compositions based
on tension and balance,
combining formal and abstract
expressionism research in his
palette and technique.
47
Adolph Gottlieb
New York 1903–74
Mist
1961
oil on canvas
182.9 x 121.9 cm
Guggenheim Museum. Gift,
Susan Morse Hilles, 1978
Gottlieb, moving away
from his early ‘Pictographs’,
gradually dispensed with
description, reducing his
imagery to simple, universal
shapes: his ‘Bursts’, beginning
in 1956, consist of color
masses and circular forms
isolated in space, hovering
on a monochrome ground
in a juxtaposition leading to
an evocative and meditative
form of painting.
48
Willem de Kooning
Rotterdam 1904
East Hampton 1997
Nude Figure–Woman
on the Beach
1963
oil on paper, mounted on
canvas
81.3 x 67.3 cm
The theme of the female
figure, so central to de
Kooning’s output, is bound
up with the artist’s gradual
abandonment of figuration
for an abstraction grounded
in a salient feature of his
art. His paintings betray
a distorting vision that
abstracts external reality with
an impetuous painterly style
bursting with energy and an
intense Expressionist palette.
49
Postwar
Europe
While the tendency in America in the 1940s was
towards a new abstraction, in Europe two leading
artists were also experimenting and anticipating
inventive forms of non figuration: Lucio Fontana in
the 1930s and Jean Dubuffet in the 1940s. Europe in
the immediate post war years was a dynamic
crucible of creativity, its vitality evident in the
movement known as Art informel or Art autre, in
which the medium of paint itself acquired a new
expressive value. This is exemplified by Burri’s
plastics, Fontana’s notorious holes (buchi), the
gestural vigor of artists whom Peggy Guggenheim
began to appreciate after her arrival in Venice such
as Vedova, the sculpture of Consagra and Mirko,
and the experimentalism of Dubuffet, whose art is
represented here by works collected by Hannelore
B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof, who bequeathed an
important part of their collection to the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation in 2012.
50
Jean Dubuffet
Le Havre 1901–Paris 1985
Fleshy Face with Chesnut
Hair (Châtaine aux hautes
chairs)
August 1951
oil-based mixed-media
on Masonite
64.9 x 54 cm
Collection
The horrors of war led
Dubuffet to reject standards
of beauty and harmony
inherited in the European
tradition from Ancient
Greece. Inspired by the
art of the mentally infirm,
the illiterate and children
(Art Brut), he painted in a
primitive style, using a thick
and textured impasto: turgid
pictorial matter with an
affinity to the aesthetics of
Art informel. He set out to
evoke a mental image of
things, rather than to depict
reality.
51
Jean Dubuffet
Portrait of Soldier Lucien
Geominne (Portrait du soldat
Lucien Geominne)
December 1950
oil-based mixed-media on
Masonite
64.8 x 61.6 cm
Lucio Fontana
Rosario de Santa Fé 1899
Varese 1968
Spatial Concept
(Concetto spaziale)
1951
oil on canvas
85.1 x 66 cm
52
Lucio Fontana
Varese 1968
Spatial Concept (Concetto
spaziale)
1957
oil, sand and glitter on canvas
115.6 x 88.9 cm
Lucio Fontana
Varese 1968
Spatial Concept, Hell
(Concetto spaziale, l’Inferno)
1956
oil, mixed media and glass on
canvas
121 x 93 cm
Florence, Private collection,
courtesy Tornabuoni Arte
53
Lucio Fontana
Varese 1968
Spatial Concept, Paradise
(Concetto spaziale, il
Paradiso)
1956
oil, mixed media and glass
on canvas
120 x 91 cm
Private collection
Concetto spaziale is
Fontana’s interpretation
of Spatialism, in which the
canvas is literally opened to
new dimensions of space and
time, emulating scientific and
technological discoveries.
Fontana enacted this by
puncturing his canvas with
an awl, evoking the energy
of a cosmic transformation
of a planet or a galaxy.
Two “baroque” paintings of
1956 come together here:
Concetto spaziale, Hell
and Concetto spaziale,
Heaven.
54
Alberto Burri
Città di Castello 1915
Nice 1995
White B (Bianco B)
1965
plastic, acrylic paint, Vinavil,
‘combustione’ on cellotex
151.1 x 151.1 cm
A leading exponent of Art
informel, Burri turned to
humble, unconventional
materials and in the midfifties he experimented by
burning them, a process he
called combustione. This
destructive act
focused attention on
the creative process, on
the material transience
of his medium. In White
B he burnt plastic: the
image’s expressive and
lyrical dimension lies in
the unpredictability of
the combustion process’s
outcome.
55
Emilio Vedova
Venice 1919–2006
Image of Time (Barrier)
(Immagine del tempo
[Sbarramento])
1951
egg tempera on canvas
130.5 x 170.4 cm
Collection
Vedova’s political
commitment, which
continued even after the
Liberation of Italy, lay behind
his agitated, violent paintings,
with their explosion of energy
that no compositional grid
could contain.
They express horror and
moral protest against social
injustice. In this sense
Vedova’s gestural painting,
like a “Jackson Pollock of the
barricades”, was unlike that
of the American Abstract
Expressionists, which it
nonetheless resembles.
56
Tancredi Parmeggiani
Feltre 1927–Rome 1964
Composition (Composizione)
1955
oil and tempera on canvas
129.5 x 181 cm
Collection
Tancredi met Peggy
Guggenheim in Venice in
1951. She provided him with
a workshop, a stipend and
the opportunity to become
familiar with the art in
her collection, especially
Pollock. This painting’s
vitality of execution and
sense of tactile richness
testify to Pollock’s influence.
Form and color increase
in density towards the
center of the composition,
causing it to appear in relief
by comparison with the
corners and thus visualizing
Tancredi’s concept of curving
space.
57
Mirko Basaldella
Udine 1910–Cambridge 1969
Lion of Damascus
(Leone di Damasco)
1954
bronze, 76 x 92 cm
Foundation. Gift Vera and
Raphael Zariski
Mirko Basaldella
(Udine 1910–Cambridge 1969)
Roaring Lion II
(Leone urlante II)
1956
bronze
77 x 94 cm
Foundation. Gift, Vera and
Raphael Zariski
Mirko showed at the 1954
Venice Biennale where Peggy
Guggenheim acquired his
work. These were donated to
the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation by the artist’s
niece and nephew. The theme,
while reminiscent of the
bronze lions of Mirko’s master,
Arturo Martini, hark back to
pre-Classical iconography, and
resonate with other ancient
civilisations such as those of
China, Mesopotamia or Mexico,
evident in the smothering
of the figure in signs and
symbols.
58
59
Pietro Consagra
Mazara del Vallo 1920
Milan 2005
Alienated Mirror
(Specchio Alienato)
1961
bronze
139.5 x 121 x 6 cm
Milan, Courtesy Archivio
Pietro Consagra
Jean Dubuffet
Staircase VII (Escalier VII)
27 April 1967
vinyl on canvas
149.5 x 132.1 cm
60
Jean Dubuffet
Logogriph of Blades
(Logogriphe aux pales)
31 March 1969
epoxy paint with
polyurethene on cast
polyester resin
55.2 x 57.8 x 38.1 cm
61
Palazzo Venier
dei Leoni:
Peggy in Venice
The images of one of Peggy Guggenheim’s New
York residences and of her palazzo in Venice show
how Peggy surrounded herself with the work of
the artists she collected or who were her friends:
from Cornell’s boxes and the bottles of her first
husband Laurence Vail (these together with
Duchamp’s Valise constituted the first show at Art
of This Century), Man Ray’s rayographs and Bacon’s
painting which hung in her bedroom in Venice, to
Tancredi’s compositions. Peggy’s special enthusiasm
for Tancredi’s work testifes to her continuing
activity as patroness and collector even after she
moved to Venice.
Jean Cocteau
Maisons-Laffitte 1889
Milly-la-Forêt 1963
Untitled
c. 1920
pen and ink on paper
26.3 x 20.4 cm
Foundation. Gift, Erina
Siciliani
Man Ray
Emmanuel Radnitsky;
Philadelphia 1890–Paris 1976
Untitled
1923
rayograph, gelatin-silver print
28.8 x 23.5 cm
Collection
Man Ray
Emmanuel Radnitsky;
Philadelphia 1890–Paris 1976
Untitled
1927
rayograph, gelatin-silver print
30.4 x 25.4 cm
Collection
62
63
Richard Oelze
Magdeburg 1900
Posteholz 1980
Fantastic Composition
(Phantastische Komposition)
c. 1935
pencil on paper
26.2 x 18.4 cm
Collection
Humphrey Jennings
Walberswick 1907
Poros 1950
Seal
1935
collage on lithograph
19 x 14 cm
Foundation. Gift, Erina
Siciliani
Henry Moore
Castleford 1898–Perry Green,
Much Hadham 1986
Untitled
1937
watercolor, charcoal, black
pencil and conté crayon on
paper
38 x 56 cm
Collection
Kurt Seligmann
Basel 1900–Sugar Loaf 1962
Fruit Bearing Tree, Design for
the Ballet The Golden Fleece
1941
watercolor on grey paper
26.5 x 42.3 cm
Foundation. Gift, Lynven Inc.
Henry Moore
Castleford 1898–Perry Green,
Much Hadham 1986
Ideas for Sculpture
1937
conté crayon and watercolor
on paper
38 x 56 cm
Collection
64
65
Joseph Cornell
Nyack 1903–New York 1972
Setting for a Fairy Tale
1942
box construction
29.4 x 36.6 x 9.9 cm
Collection
André Kertész
Budapest 1894
New York 1985
Peggy Guggenheim
1945
gelatin-silver print
24.1 x 19.4 cm
Foundation. Gift, Canton
Argovia, Switzerland, In
recognition of the origin of
the Guggenheim family in
Lengnau
Laurence Vail
Paris 1891–1968
Untitled
n.d.
glass bottle and collage
43 cm high
Collection
66
Laurence Vail
Paris 1891–1968
Untitled
n.d.
glass bottle and collage
21 cm high
Collection
Laurence Vail
Paris 1891–1968
Untitled
n.d.
glass bottle, light fixture,
and collage
29 cm high
Collection
Laurence Vail
Paris 1891–1968
Untitled
n.d.
assemblage of objects
and fabric
34.5 cm high
Collection
67
Untitled
1951–2
watercolor and ink on paper
29 x 22.5 cm
Foundation. Gift, Giorgio
Bellavitis
Untitled
1951–2
watercolor, gouache, oil,
and pencil on paper
29 x 22.5 cm
Foundation. Gift, Giorgio
Bellavitis
68
Joseph Cornell
Nyack 1903–New York 1972
Untitled (Medici Princess)
c. 1955
wood box construction with
glass and mixed media
38.1 x 25,4 x 6.4 cm
Francis Bacon
Dublin 1909–Madrid 1992
Study for Chimpanzee
March 1957
oil and pastel on canvas
152.4 x 117 cm
Collection
69
Mask
Zaire, Salampasu
wood, copper, paint,
and vegetable fiber
62 cm high
Collection
Flute Figure
Papua, Nuova Guinea, East
Sepik Province, Chambri
polychrome wood and dog’s
teeth
50 cm high
Collection
70
Asger Jorn
Vejrun 1914–Aarhus 1973
Untitled
1956
oil on canvas
99.8 x 69.5 cm
Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph B.
Schulhof, 1986
Jorn’s paintings after 1948
are crowded with faces and
figures, ethereal equivalents
of the faces we see in the
work of Ensor, while the
sketchy features, midway
between the naïve and the
demonic, evoke the work of
Jean Dubuffet and Paul Klee
– faces so fused with the
ground as to be virtually
indistinguishable. The
importance of chance in
Jorn’s work points to an
interest in Surrealism.
71
Great
American
Painting
Abstract Expressionism’s revolutionary phase
(to which Motherwell’s early work belongs) was
followed by a second generation which based its art
no longer on an existentialist emphasis on gesture
but on an exploration of painting in its moment of
creation, leading to diminished interest in
expressionist and painterly content. Artists moved
in two directions: Color Field and Post-Painterly
Abstraction, typified by unmodulated, twodimensional color, which artists such as Morris Louis
would allow to flow onto the canvas, saturating it in
paint, and by the cool geometry of Frank Stella and
Kenneth Noland.
The rich variety of this mature panorama in
American art at the turn of the 1950s is completed
by the galaxy of mobiles invented by Alexander
Calder, one of the greatest masters of the abstract
who changed the very notion of sculpture,
orchestrating contrasting forces that constantly
change both their relationships in space and
the shape of the work itself. Peggy Guggenheim
admired and collected Calder’s work, while the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum celebrated it with
a major retrospective in the early 1960s.
72
Alexander Calder
Philadelphia 1898
New York 1976
Mobile
c. 1934
glass, china, iron wire,
and thread
approximately 167 x 117 cm
Collection
Marcel Duchamp coined the
word “mobile” to describe
Calder’s work, which
moves without a motor,
propelled only by the air and
dependent on meticulous
balancing. Calder’s
constructions tend to consist
of wire constructions joined
to objects or flat sheets of
metal whose biomorphic
forms recall the organic
motifs of the Surrealist
painting and sculpture of
Joan Miró and Jean Arp,
both of whom were Calder’s
friends.
73
Alexander Calder
Philadelphia 1898
New York 1976
Mobile
1947–52
metal sheet and coated wires
97 x 180 x 46.4 cm
Private collection
Alexander Calder
Philadelphia 1898
New York 1976
Red Yellow and blue Gongs
(or Triple Gong)
1951
painted sheet metal,
and steel wire
135 x 220 x 170 cm
Venice, Fondazione Musei
Civici di Venezia, Galleria
Internazionale di Arte
Moderna, Cà Pesaro, inv.
2020. Gift of the artist, 1952
74
Alexander Calder
Philadelphia 1898
New York 1976
Red Disc, White Dots
on Black
1960
painted sheet metal, metal
rods and steel wire
88.9 x 101 x 99 cm
Alexander Calder
Philadelphia 1898
New York 1976
Yellow Moon
(Croissant jaune)
1966
painted sheet metal, metal
rods and steel wire
162.6 x 243.8 x 177.8 cm
75
Grace Hartigan
Newark 1922
Baltimore 2008
Ireland
1958
oil on canvas
200 x 271 cm
Collection
A trip to Ireland, her family’s
native land, in 1958 inspired
Hartigan to produce
numerous works which were
not intended to refer to
specific localities but were
simply abstract evocations of
places deeply rooted in her
experience.
76
Robert Motherwell
Aberdeen 1915
Provincetown 1991
Elegy to the Spanish Republic
No. 110
Easter Day 1971
acrylic with graphite and
charcoal on canvas
208.3 x 289.6 cm
Agnes Gund
The cycle of Elegies to the
Spanish Republic, which
Motherwell began in the
late 1940s and pursued
throughout his life, refers to
human suffering and serves
as an abstract and poetic
symbol of the cycle of life
and death. These are the only
works in which Motherwell
began with preparatory
sketches, in order to achieve
a final image that was not
improvised. Black and white
recall the drama of Picasso’s
Guernica, but also imply a
dark moment in history.
77
Morris Louis
Baltimore 1912
Washington D.C. 1962
Saraband
1959
acrylic resin on canvas
256.9 x 378.5 cm
Guggenheim Museum
Helen Frankenthaler
New York 1928–Darien 2011
Canal
1963
acrylic on canvas
205.7 x 146 cm
Guggenheim Museum.
Purchased with the aid of
funds from the National
Endowment for the Arts, in
Washington, D.C., a federal
agency; matching funds
contributed by Evelyn Sharp
Together with Joan Mitchell,
Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan
and Elaine de Kooning, Helen
Frankenthaler was a leading
woman in the season of New
York Abstract Expressionism.
From 1962 she switched
from oil paint to acrylics,
adapting her style to the
new expressive medium,
and creating forms in semitransparent tonalities with
broad areas in single, more
or less flat colors. This came
to be known as Color Field
Painting.
78
79
Morris Louis
Baltimore 1912
Washington D.C. 1962
#48
1962
oil on canvas
203.2 x 30.5 cm
Kenneth Noland
Asheville 1924
Port Clyde 2010
Birth
1961
oil on canvas
91.4 x 91.4 cm
80
Frank Stella
b. Malden 1936
Gray Scramble
1968–9
oil on canvas
175.3 x 175.3 cm
The work of Kenneth Noland,
Morris Louis and Frank
Stella was a reaction to
the gestural, material and
brushy nature of Abstract
Expressionism. They
preferred clarity of form and
undifferentiated
flat surfaces. All trace of the
artist’s hand is eliminated;
there are no hidden
meanings, nor allusions other
than what the observer
brings to looking at the
painting. Stella famously said:
“What you see is what you
see”.
81
MarK
Rothko
Peggy Guggenheim instantly recognized Rothko’s
potential, devoting an exhibition to his work at Art
of This Century as early as 1945, while many of his
works are held by the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, clearly illustrating the esteem of both.
Rothko developed a highly personal abstract
style in the 1950s. His painting’s appeal lies in the
mysterious process that enabled him to simplify
the complex vision that his pictures express. Time
is non-existent in his paintings, their slow progress
to meet the observer’s soul endlessly testifying to
the tragic facts of birth, life and death. The intense
emotive force transmitted by his work prompts
one to reassess one’s relationship to visual art.
Rothko eventually achieved absolute monochrome,
in blacks and grays, an ‘oldage style’ that was
his last endeavour to probe the limits of pictorial
expression.
82
Mark Rothko
Marcus Rothkowitz;
Dvinsk 1903–New York 1970
Sacrifice
April 1946
watercolor, gouache, and
India ink on paper
100.2 x 65.8 cm
Collection
Mark Rothko
Marcus Rothkowitz;
Untitled
1947
oil on canvas
121 x 90.1 cm
The Mark Rothko Foundation
83
Mark Rothko
Marcus Rothkowitz;
No.18 (Black. Orange on
Maroon)
1963
oil on canvas
175.6 x 163.5 cm
The Mark Rothko Foundation
Mark Rothko
Marcus Rothkowitz;
Untitled
1968
acrylic on paper laid on panel
100 x 65.3 cm
New York, Collection of
Stephen Robert and Pilar
Crespi Robert
84
Mark Rothko
Marcus Rothkowitz;
Untitled (Red)
1968
oil on paper mounted on
canvas
83.8 x 65.4 cm
Mark Rothko
Marcus Rothkowitz;
Untitled (Black on Gray)
1969–70
acrylic on canvas
203.3 x 175.5 cm
The Mark Rothko Foundation,
Inc
85
The 1960s:
The Start of
a New Era
Propitious Moment, one of Dubuffet’s masterpieces,
opens the 1960s. Among various exhibitions
of Dubuffet’s art organized by the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, that in 1966 was dedicated
to Hourloupe, Dubuffet’s neologism to describe his
work based on cloisonné black lines framing white
with occasional patches of primary color, that was
to influence Street Art.
European and American art moved forward
with a synthesis of the minimal and the abstract
exemplified by Twombly (who employed a
calligraphic technique of graffiti on a solid gray,
brown or white ground, midway between painting
and engraving), by the precision of Fontana’s cuts
and by the formal, hard-edge elegance of Kelly.
But this trend, which traced its roots to the avantgardes of the early part of the century, was to be
cut short in this decade by the explosion of a new
artistic movement, Pop Art. Roy Lichtenstein’s
Preparedness, painted in the pivotal year of 1968
and on display here, inaugurated a new era in
contemporary art. Nothing was quite the same
again.
86
Jean Dubuffet
Propitious Moment
(L’Instant propice)
2–3 January 1962
oil on canvas
200 x 165 cm
Guggenheim Museum
Cy Twombly
Lexington, Virginia 1928
Rome 2011
Untitled
1961
oil paint, crayon and lead
pencil on canvas
133.4 x 151.1 cm
87
Cy Twombly
Lexington, Virginia 1928
Rome 2011
Untitled
1967
oil based house paint and
wax crayon on canvas
127 x 170.2 cm
Born in America but Italian by
adoption, Twombly created a
highly personal kind of mural
painting with his imposing
graffiti/irrational scribbling
and paint squirts from the
tube. His compositions,
with their unpremeditated yet
controlled character, evoke
automatic writing. In 1966
Twombly began to work on a
cycle of paintings depicting
repetitive white lines, often
in rings, on gray canvases
reminiscent of slate.
88
Barbara Hepworth
Wakefield 1903–St Ives 1975
Single Form (Chûn Quoit)
1961
edition 3/7
bronze
106 x 67.3 x 11.4 cm
Hepworth, one of Britain’s
greatest 20th century
sculptors on a par with
her friend Henry Moore,
transfigured the concept
of a well-known Stone Age
dolmen, or quoit, in Cornwall,
where she had moved before
the outbreak of World War
II. Her interaction with nature
was crucial to her sculpture,
with its smooth surfaces,
its perfection and its formal
elegance. This is a version of
her most celebrated public
sculpture, the Single Form at
the UN in New York.
89
90
Ellsworth Kelly
Newburgh, New York 1923
42nd
1958
oil on canvas
153.7 x 203.2 cm
Lucio Fontana
Varese 1968
Spatial Concept, Expectations
(Concetto spaziale, Attese)
1965
water-based paint on canvas
130 x 97 cm
Foundation. Gift, Fondazione
Lucio Fontana
Kelly offered an abstract take
on one of the most important
streets to cross Manhattan
(where he lived at the time),
focusing on the space
between buildings and the
shadows cast by skyscrapers.
Kelly was sensitive to
everything around him,
capturing a visual fragment
with the perspicacity of an
artist before distilling it in
pure form and color. Initially
inspired by the outside world,
the form is transformed into
an entity in its own right.
Roy Lichtenstein
New York 1923–97
Preparedness
1968
oil and Magna on three joined
canvases
304.8 x 548.6 cm
Guggenheim Museum
Painted in the vibrant colors
characteristic of Pop Art, this
work has the appearance of a
huge strip cartoon thanks to
the ben day printing dots on
a close-up scale. Despite the
vibrant colors, the three
canvases are a pretext
for protesting the gloom
(the black contours) of
the Industrial Revolution.
Preparedness in the title refers
to the Vietnam War, caught
between the myth of violence
and the cogs of a society that
crushes everything.
91
timeline
1922
Peggy weds artist Laurence Vail
in Paris. The couple have two
children, Sindbad and Pegeen.
2 February 1861
Solomon R. Guggenheim is born
in Philadelphia to a wealthy
mining family of Swiss origin.
1928
Peggy leaves Veil for British
literary critic John Ferrar Holms.
26 August 1898 Peggy Guggenheim is born to
Benjamin and Florette Seligman
in New York.
29 October 1929
Black Tuesday. The Wall Street
stock market collapses, triggering
the Great Depression.
15 April 1912 Benjamin Guggenheim dies a
hero’s death on board the Titanic
after helping to rescue women
and children.
7 July 1930
Solomon and German Baroness
Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen,
his adviser and an artist in her
own right, call on Vasilii Kandinsky
at the Bauhaus in Dessau.
1 August 1914 Germany declares war first on
Russia and then on France
(3 August), also violating the
neutrality of Luxembourg and
Belgium (1–4 August) and thus
prompting Great Britain to join
the war. Japan enters the conflict
on 23 August; Portugal sides with
the Entente, Italy joins the war in
1915, while Spain opts for neutrality.
Winter 1930–1
Solomon’s collection is shown in
a Plaza Hotel suite in New York.
1933
Hitler is appointed chancellor of
Germany. The Nazis shut down
the Bauhaus in March. Kandinsky
moves to Paris.
January 1937
The American Abstract Artists
group is founded.
28 June 1919 The Allies and the powers that
had sided with them during the
conflict sign the Treaty of
Versailles with Germany, bringing
World War I to an end.
26 April 1937
The Germans, with support from
the Italians who are favourable
to Franco’s Falange, bomb the
Basque city of Guernica, razing it
to the ground.
1921
Peggy leaves the United States
for Europe.
92
93
July 1941
Peggy leaves Lisbon to return to
New York after helping numerous
artists to flee occupied Europe.
She travels to the US on board a
flying boat..
An exhibition entitled Entartete
Kunst (Degenerate Art) opens in
Munich.
1941
Peggy marries Max Ernst.
The couple separate in 1943.
1937
Foundation is established to
alleviate the tax burden and
with the intention of continuing to
develop plans for a museum.
14 October
7 November 1942
An exhibition entitled First Papers
of Surrealism, devised by André
Breton and the layout for which
was designed by Marchel
Duchamp, opens in New York..
January 1938
Peggy opens the Guggenheim
Jeune gallery in London.
March 1939
Peggy plans to open a “modern
art museum in London” and to
hire Herbert Read as its director.
1 June 1939
Solomon’s Museum of NonObjective Painting opens at nos.
24–26, 54th Streat East with an
exhibition entitled Art of
Tomorrow curated by Hilla Rebay.
20 October 1942
Peggy opens her Art of This
century museum and gallery in
Manhattan. The innovative space
designed by architect Frederick
Kiesler becomes a focal point for
osmotic interaction between
between European emigré artists
and the new American avant-garde.
1 September 1939
Germany invades Poland. France
and Great Britain declare war on
the Third Reich on 3 September.
Franco’s Spain opts for neutrality.
14 June 1940
German troops occupy Paris.
25 May
25 November 1937
Paris hosts the Exposition
Internationale des Arts et
Techniques; Picasso’s Guernica
is shown in the Spanish Pavilion.
19 July 1937
94
9-27 November 1943 Art of This Century hosts Jackson
Pollock’s first one-man exhibition.
6 June 1944
D-Day. Allied troops land in
Normandy.
1944
Dubuffet holds his first
one-man exhibition at
the Galerie René Drouin in Paris.
28 April 1945
Benito Mussolini is
executed by firing squad
at Giulino di Mezzegra
in the province of Como.
95
1945
Dubuffet holds his first
one-man exhibition at
the Galerie René Drouin in Paris.
18 June 1946
Italy is proclaimed a Republic
following the abolition of the
Monarchy by referendum on
2 June. Enrico De Nicola is elected
to the presidency.
1947
Peggy returns to Europe.
Art of This Century closes.
May
September 1948
Peggy shows her collection at the
first postwar Biennale in Venice,
occupying the pavilion freed up
by Greece.
24 February
10 March 1949
An exhibition of Peggy’s collection
inaugurates the new Strozzina
exhibition space in Florence.
July 1949
Peggy purchases Palazzo Venier
dei Leoni in Venice.
3 November 1949
Solomon dies in New York.
1949
Lucio Fontana begins
work on his Holes cycle.
1950
Peggy organises Jackson Pollock’s
first one-man exhibition in Europe
in the Napoleonic Wing of the
Museo Correr in Venice.
96
1951
Michel Tapié organises the
Véhémences confrontées
exhibition in Paris. (Bryen,
Capogrossi, De Kooning, Hartung,
Mathieu, Pollock, Riopelle,
Russell and Wols).
1952
Michel Tapié publishes a book
entitled Un Art Autre in which
he coins the terms
ART INFORMEL for the new
postwar abstract trends.
March 1952
Hilla Rebay is appointed director
emeritus of the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation and is
replaced by James Johnson
Sweeney.
4 July 1957
The new Fiat 500 is launched.
1958
‘The New American Painting’,
a travelling exhibition organised
by MoMa that would reach eight
European countries, inaugurates
in Basel. It opens in Milan’s
Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna
in June.
10-23 February 1959 Lucio Fontana shows his Slashes
for the first time at the Galleria del
Naviglio in Milan.
21 October 1959
Museum opens in New York,
in a building designed by Frank
Lloyd Wright, with an exhibition of
selected works from the museum’s
97
collections.
March 1960
Fellini’s La Dolce Vita premieres.
1961
The Berlin Wall is erected.
Yuri Gagarin is the first man in
space.
1962
US military operations begin in
South Vietnam. Marilyn Monroe is
found dead.
22 November 1963
President John F. Kennedy is shot
dead in Dallas.
4 April 1968
Martin Luther King is assassinated.
98
May 1968
Students and workers riot in the
streets of Paris in protest against
traditional society.
6 June 1968
Robert Kennedy is assassinated.
20 July 1969
Man lands on the moon.
1973
The United States ceases all
military operations in Vietnam.
1976
The Peggy Guggenheim
Collection is declared an Italian
national monument and becomes
part of the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation.
23 December 1979
Peggy dies at the age of 81 at the
Camposampiero hospital in the
province of Padua.
99
Editorial coordination
Ludovica Sebregondi
Manuela Bersotti
Translations
Stephen Tobin
This publication brings together
the explanatory texts of the exhibition
From Kandinsky to Pollock.
The Art of the Guggenheim Collections
Florence, Palazzo Strozzi
19 March–24 July 2016
Graphic design
RovaiWeber design
curated by
Luca Massimo Barbero
Organized by
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi Florence
The Solomon R. Guggenheim New York and Venezia
With the support of
Comune di Firenze
Camera di Commercio di Firenze
Associazione Partners Palazzo Strozzi
Regione Toscana
With the contribution of
Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze
With the patronage of
Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali
e del Turismo
Consulate General of the United States
of America in Florence
Consulat honoraire
de France à Florence
100
101
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi
Piazza Strozzi, 50123 Firenze
www.palazzostrozzi.org

the exhibition captions

Transcription

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